Image by Abby Walsh

Beth Soll presents Beth Soll & Company, an ensemble of dancers and musicians, in Dances of Passion and Peace, A Concert of New Dance, Music, and Poetry. This evening of dance premieres will also feature new music by composers Thomas Addison, Nuria Divi, Wendy Griffiths, Josh Rosen, and Stan Strickland, and poetry, both sung and spoken, of Robert Frost, Lin Haire-Sargeant, Langston Hughes, Rumi, and Walt Whitman. Poems will be recited in English, French, Catalan, German, French, and American Sign Language. The 11 dances will be performed by Janet Aisawa, Abby Dias, Kristen Hedberg, Lindsey Miller, Hannah McClean, Marisa Post, and Beth Soll. Singer Eliana Berrean and pianists Wendy Griffiths, Elizabeth Rodgers, and Alex Wu will also perform. Lighting Designer James Kolditz will illuminate the event.

PERFORMANCES
November 22 & 23, 8 PM, at University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street.
General Admission: $18
Tickets at https://passionandpeace.brownpapertickets.com, 1.800.838.3006 or at the door.

Presented by Dance Projects, Inc and co-presented by The Performance Project @ University Settlement

Inspiration for Dances of Passion and Peace came from Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, and his interest in spiritual enlightenment within the context of contrasting, potentially transcendent ways of life: in this case, a life of power, love, and conflict versus a life of supremely quiet meditation.

“Gentle, unusual, luminous…iconic purity…thoughtful, beguiling dance.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

“This is dance at its most magical, mystical, mysterious.”
Cerina Survant, Chicago Reader
Beth Soll founded Beth Soll & Company in Boston in 1977, presenting regular concerts there and in other US venues (including Westbeth) and internationally, while directing the dance program at MIT for 20 years. After earning a Ph.D in the History and Theory of Modern Dance from the University Professors Program at Boston University in 1999, and a teaching stint at UCSanta Barbara, Soll moved to New York. Now in her seventies and still dancing, Soll’s very individual style has earned enthusiastic praise throughout the years. After 17 years on the waiting list, Soll happily joined the Westbeth community.

More information: bethsollandcompany.org

Mindy Belloff’s newest work is prominently featured at the Peabody Essex Museum. “The Creative Legacy of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selections from the Phillips Library Collection,” is on view from September 28, 2019 through March 29, 2020.

This is the first exhibition in a new gallery dedicated to showcasing works from the museum’s research library. Nathaniel Hawthorne is integral to Salem’s rich history, and PEM’s Phillips Library collection includes over 3,000 individual volumes by the author.

The library’s recent acquisition of Mindy Belloff‘s A Golden Thread, a contemporary reinterpretation of Hawthorne’s short story “The Minotaur,” considers the links between past and present, visual and verbal, and how artists have drawn on one another’s work throughout time. Focusing on the visual artistry of bookmaking and printing, from cover designs to typography, this exhibition highlights the full creativity present in books as art objects.

Mindy Belloff is the proprietor of the only private fine press in Manhattan. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States, ranks in the top 20 art museums in the country. Web: Peabody Essex Museum

The artist Hans Haacke in his home. He covered his face with his artwork entitled, “We (All) Are the People,” from his retrospective at the New Museum.CreditCreditHans Haacke/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Cole Wilson for The New York Times

NY Times
October 11, 2019

Anyone who knows much about the defiantly political art of Hans Haacke, filling the New Museum in New York later this month, is bound to feel anxious before meeting the famous firebrand. But when Mr. Haacke showed up for an interview at his dealer’s gallery in Manhattan, what was shocking was his quietude: In sensible sandals, roomy jeans and a staid plaid shirt, the 83-year-old New Yorker answered questions with an amiable, unflappable calm.

Asked about what seems to have been almost an embargo against him among American curators, despite his huge reputation in Europe, he replied, “before they make a move — one that is not quite the norm — they need to consider (and I don’t blame them for that) whether this is good for their personal career.”

Queried on the power of museum donors, a group he has unflinchingly confronted in his art, he replied merely that he “suspects” — and in person, Mr. Haacke never does more than “suspect”— that the power of art to affect viewers’ thinking leaves museum benefactors with “an interest in what is being shown there, and what is not going to be shown there.” And the art some donors would prefer not to see exhibited includes Mr. Haacke’s own.

“He’s just a really nice guy,” said Andrea Fraser, a peer of Mr. Haacke’s known for equally hard-nosed work. “I’ve never seen him be aggressive” — at least not in the flesh, she clarified, acknowledging the aggression in his art.

Read full article by Blake Gopnik HERE

SUNDAY SERIES WORKS IN PROGRESS
When: Sunday Oct. 13th at 4PM
Where: University Settlement, 184 Eldridge Street.
Reservations: 212 924 7822
Tickets: $10

“Inspired to create and dance a solo in tribute to her father on the tenth anniversary of his death, JUDITH MOSS, honors the legacy of her parents who were born in Berlin and fled Nazi-occupied Europe during WW 11. Crossing borders illegally, living in the shadows, undocumented… dangerous times now and then.”

As an independent choreographer Judith Moss has been a guest artist at numerous colleges and universities including Muhlenberg College, Dickinson College, University of Nevada among others. Moss has been an invited adjudicator and panelist for numerous arts boards and since 2014 she has been asked to conduct an annual assessment of the SUNY Purchase College dance program. She is a recipient of fellowship awards in choreography from the National Endowment for the Arts, State Arts Councils in New York, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and Turks & Caicos Friends of the Arts Foundation.